Food business owners across Canada can now apply for a licence under the new Safe Food for Canadians Regulations by accessing the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s online portal, My CFIA. These regulations will protect Canadian families by making the food system even safer by focusing on prevention and allowing for faster removal of unsafe food from the marketplace.

Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) members from across the province met this week to discuss the agri-food sector’s potential for growth, vote for leadership of the organization and address related challenges facing the industry.

Canadian farmers and food processors across the country work hard every day to put safe, high-quality food on our tables, while driving our economy and creating good, middle-class jobs. Farming can provide an amazing lifestyle with great rewards, but it can also be hard on mental health. Farmers and their families often face high levels of stress because of forces that are beyond their control, such as weather, disease, commodity prices, and trade.

The corn salvage benefit for 2018 covers cases where DON (deoxynivalenol) levels in harvested corn exceed five parts per million (5 ppm). The benefit is designed to help producers cover costs to harvest and then market, use as feed or find an alternative use for damaged corn.

The Agriculture and Agri-Food (AAFC) website is undergoing a renovation, and as a result the Pest Management Centre pages have been relocated to join the AAFC Research and Development Centres’ web pages. Along with this migration, the pest management centre homepage has been updated.

Canada's recent Fall Economic Statement 2018 showed that the Government's plan is working: More Canadians are employed, wages are growing, and middle class Canadians have more money to save, invest and grow the economy. The Government of Canada knows that Canadian farmers and food processors are key drivers of the Canadian economy. The Statement is the next step in our plan, where we are supporting Canada's competitiveness so that Canadian agriculture and agri-food businesses can grow and create more good, middle class jobs.

The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) welcomes Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada’s recent announcement of $5 million in funding from the Canadian Agricultural Partnership to support the Automation Cluster.

The Canadian greenhouse sector is the largest and fastest growing segment of Canadian horticulture, thanks to the dedication and endless hard work from our growers across the country. This past year, Canadian greenhouse vegetable sales totalled over $1.4 billion, with over $900 million of sales in Ontario.

The Canadian agricultural sector is experiencing a significant labour gap in workers. In 2014, there were 26,400 unfilled jobs, which cost the industry 1.5 billion dollars. The Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council is conducting a survey to update this number, and expect the unfilled jobs to have reached 114,000.

The Women Entrepreneurship Fund is a $20 million investment by the Government of Canada which aims to assist women-owned and/or women-led businesses to grow their existing businesses and enable them to pursue opportunities in domestic and global markets. It will provide successful applicants with up to $100,000 in non-repayable contribution funding for a 12-month project.

Under the Women Entrepreneurship Fund, priority will be given to any of the following three applicant groups:

Most on-farm marketers would agree that the seventies were the pinnacle of the pick-your-own (PYO) era. The majority of families at that time had one wage earner and by going to a farm to pick your own fruits and vegetables and preserve them for the winter, families were able to stretch the single salary a little bit further.

The Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers’ Association (OFVGA) welcomes the recent announcement by the Canadian government whereby it is providing targeted relief from the federal carbon tax on fuels for heating greenhouses. This targeted relief is a positive step by the federal government to recognize the unique needs of domestic food production.

The greenhouse vegetable sector has quickly become an economic driver in the province, generating over $920 million in farmgate sales in 2017. Using modern and efficient technologies, Ontario greenhouse growers are able to produce fresh product year-round in Canada’s northern climate, complementing Ontario’s bountiful field grown fruit and vegetable production. Without relief, carbon pricing has the potential to negatively impact the competitiveness of greenhouse and field production of fruits and vegetables, both of which compete in the global marketplace.

“The reality is that farmers have already been incentivized to become energy efficient as it has been necessary to remain competitive,” says Jan VanderHout, chair of the OFVGA. “Today, we thank the federal government for recognizing the specific needs of greenhouse production.”

The OFVGA looks forward to ongoing dialogue with the federal and Ontario provincial governments to support all of Ontario’s fruit and vegetable farmers as stewards of the air, land and water that they depend on to contribute to Canada’s food security and the economy.

The Greenbelt Fund is partnering with the Wallace Centre and Farm Credit East to undertake this Food Hub Financial Benchmarking Survey based on their past successful surveys in the United States.

With your help, we can benchmark Ontario’s food hub sector to help us all better understand where the food hub sector is headed, and help individual hub operators such as yourself understand how to get on, and stay on, the path to long-term financial success.

Large companies develop or access benchmarks by hiring consulting firms to conduct research on their competitors. We want to have the data collected so that key benchmarks of the sector can be shared with all of you to help you grow your businesses and build stronger, more sustainable food systems.

How to participate in the survey:

You’ll complete a brief survey and submit your financial data for analysis. This process is completely confidential (The Greenbelt Fund and Wallace Centre never sees any individual data) and protected by Farm Credit’s bank-level security.

To ensure that you’re ready to participate in the survey, please review the Wallace Center’s free Financial Fundamentals for Food Hubs webinar series, in which Farm Credit East staff demonstrate how to set up and manage your key financial information.

Your hub will receive an individualized benchmark report, comparing your individual hub performance to the sector, and guidance on how to use the findings of the survey as a decision-making and goal-setting tool.

Once the data are analyzed and findings documented the Greenbelt Fund will host a webinar on the findings in early 2019.

The deadline to complete the online survey is November 30, 2018

Each hub participating in the study is automatically entered to win a RoboCoupe Food Processor – a handy item for food hub operators that prepare, cut, slice, and dice local food! One winner will be selected from the survey participants.

If a recent demonstration in Canada is any indication, the digital vineyard of the future might very well receive scientific data in real-time gathered by drones and transferred via a cell network.

Global UAV Technologies Ltd., Jöst Vineyards, VineView (Scientific Aerial Imaging Inc.) and a major Canadian telecommunications company recently completed a 4G proof-of-concept mission in in Malagash, N.S., to demonstrate a real-word application of drone technology for a project called the “Digital Vineyard of the Future.”

“Fine wine making is in the growing of grapes with specific qualities, where many variables have to be taken into consideration,” said Jonathan Rodwell, director of viticulture and winemaking for Jöst Vineyards. “We see these emerging technologies offering excellent opportunities for integrated measurement and management of our vineyards and focus on precision viticulture.” | For the full story, CLICK HERE.